Have you ever wanted to type accented Spanish letters without holding down awkward combinations in Microsoft Word or memorizing a series of numbers to press while holding the Alt key? If yes, then this tutorial will teach you how to program an easy combination for each Spanish character (á, é, í, ó, ú, ñ). By simply holding Alt while pressing that respective letter, you will be able to type these characters easily; for example, to get the character á, you would just have to hold Alt and press the A key.

Please wait for the pictures to load as you scroll down the tutorial. 

Step One

Click on “Insert” in the top menu, and then click on “Symbol”.

Step Two

Find the Spanish character á and click on it. It is important that you select the right character, as there are many different variations of a’s, as you can see. Click on “Shortcut Key”

Step Three

Click in the “Press new shortcut key:” box and then hold down the Alt key while pressing the A key.

Step Four

Within the textbox now should be Alt+A . Click Assign, and then click Close. 

Step Five

Repeat this process as shown in Steps 2-4 for all of the Spanish characters that you need to use (á, é, í, ó, ú, ñ). Again, be sure to select the correct character, as many look very similar. 

Step Six

Pay attention to this step and the next in case you need to make the character a capital letter (Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú, Ñ). Although you will probably not need to capitalize these characters often, it is a good technique to be familiar with.

Select the lowercase character and then click on Format on the top bar, and click on Change Case.

Step Seven

Choose UPPERCASE from the list and click OK.

The End

Now you know how to program you character map so that you can type Spanish characters easily. If anything in the tutorial was unclear, did not work, or if you have any questions in general, you can email me at mwilkos@udel.edu .